Lateral Study on Upper Secondary Science Lesson in India : With a Focus on Teacher’s Question and Learning Theory <Article>

The description such as “Teacher-centered lesson” or “Knowledge transmission type lesson” could be seen in the context of science and mathematics education in developing countries. How (method) and who (actor) will be able to improve those lessons? This is the main motive in that field. Along with that, researches on revealing the aspect of lesson with lesson analysis have been done. Nevertheless it is still necessary to approach the issue beyond the aspect of lesson in order to change aforementioned lessons intrinsically. This study aims to uncover the aspects of science lesson in India, and to identify the issue forming teacher’s learning theory behind the lesson by applying positivism and constructivism based on the view of knowledge. Survey was conducted on 10 science lessons in upper secondary schools in Darjeeling district, West Bengal state, India. The result of this study shows that the observed 9 science lessons were composed by teacher-oriented question whereas student-oriented question was less appeared. In addition, extracted teacher’s perspective toward the purpose of question was dominated by confirmation of the student understanding. Those results imply that the science lessons seemed to be on the view of positivism and this suggests that the issues which makes lesson as it is might be teacher’s belief or value in terms of teaching and learning, the student’s behavior based on his/her belief or value in terms of learning, and even the school environment. The challenge for future research should focus on revealing those factors bilaterally